Mobile structures

Mobile Structures Intro

Mobile Structures are 4 new BPO's that are added by the Rubicon patch to act as a kind of "Personal POS" and allow for greater flexibility for players within the field and expand upon survivability, utility, espionage and defence. Relatively easy to produce and becoming a more common sight by the day and come in 4 "Flavours" of BPO

Mobile Depot
Mobile Tractor Unit
Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor and
Mobile Syphon Unit

This article will explain what they are and how they work.

Mobile Depots

A Mobile Depot floating through space

Mobile Depots act as a kind of in field fitting service and storage facility. Allowing for ships to keep one fit on the ship and another in the hold for quick swapping at a "safe spot" and to hold any extras they may need room for from Ratting/Mining/PvP. They take a minute to setup, use only 50m3 of cargo space and will last for 30 days and after that they vanish so you need to keep an eye on them. Also any player can attack them and only get a suspect flag, necessitating either defending the Depot or scooping it up and moving it, making sure to pick up whatever you can take with you as it will be jettisoned after scooping to the hold. It also has a 2 day reinforcement timer once the depot reaches 25% of its maximum HP

These Depots have a number of applications but the two most used (Thus far) are as a temporary "home", setting it up and bookmarking it to come to as and when needed. The other use is primarily reserved for Lowsec/Nullsec/WH's where you move around in a travel fit and create a "safe spot" before going off to do stuff and returning to it and instantly refitting your ship for combat when things get hairy.

Mobile Tractor Unit

A Mobile Tractor Unit bringing in the goods

These do exactly what they say, put it down and it will start to tractor in any tractorable items within a 125km radius at 1000 m/sec into its massive 27,000m3 hold but can only target things one at a time. These units only take 10 seconds to deploy and will last 2 days. These units are more specialised and rare due to the increased cost and skills required but are still a worthwhile investment if you dont have access to a Noctis.

Applications are few and far between but if used right it can be a godsend for time saving. Put one (maybe 2 or 3) down at the start of combat and keep the wrecks within 125km and you wont need to worry about slowboating towards each individual wreck as they will likely all be now clustered around the unit, just park up and let your salvager get to work. Other possible applications are within mining gangs who dont have access to say an Orca, put these down and jettison the ore for it to pick up and come back in a transport ship later on to pick up the goods.

Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor

Cyno=Blocked

The Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor is almost invaluable within 0.0, creating easy to set up inhibitors that can severely limit the enemy's ability to hot-drop on top of your units or gates. It prevents all normal cyno fields (but not covert cynos) from activating within 100km of the inhibitor. It takes two minutes to set up, has a 300m3 volume and will stay in space for 1 hour. However unlike the other mobile structures this one cannot be reclaimed and will stay in space for that one hour or until someone blasts it apart. It is inherently designed for small or medium gangs as it cannot stay active for long under heavy fire due to a lack of HP that comes from the structure itself. One other limitation is it cannot be deployed in any location that would cause 2 fields to overlap as well as being expensive to produce (150m for the BPO alone).

Even with all those limitations it will still become a common sight in 0.0 due to the massive benefits that come from being able to control owned space and combat zones so effectively.

Mobile Siphon Unit

Theft: Now you dont even have to be there!

These units represent a new option to those with more clandestine missions as they will syphon off a portion of the moon minerals or reaction results that go towards the stations silos. Designed to be secretly deployed near to a POS and will not alert the owner to the theft of materials nor will the stations guns automatically shoot at it, meaning that people who own POS's need to keep a watchful eye out for any of these things floating around. Like the Mobile Cynosural Inhibitor this is a one use item but with an added twist, any pilot may access the hold so even the thieves wont be immune to theft. It only weighs 35m3, takes 5 seconds to deploy and will last 30 days with a cargo hold of 900m3 but needs to be within 30km of the target, so CovOps ships can truly take advantage of these automated thieves.

Other points to note:

No criminal or suspect flags will be placed upon attacking the syphon.
Will prioritise raw materiel over refined (cannot take alchemy output).
Can only steal from one silo at a time and only the one at the end of a chain.
Will take 60 raw or 30 processed at a time.
Players cannot put items into it.
Multiple syphon units can be placed around the POS and will steal in order deployed.
Have a waste factor of 10%
Will only steal during a production cycle (once per hour)
Max range of 50km
Can be manually targeted by station guns

General limitations

All Mobile Structures have a minimum distance they have to be away from certain structures in order to be deployed (see below) and all of them are capable of being destroyed by anyone and the attacker will only get a suspect flag for it so a watchful eye needs to be on your goods as often as you can. Some of them can be relatively easy to scan down due to low sensor strength which makes them rather vulnerable, however the named versions of the Mobile Depot are very resilient to probing, the Yurt in particular boasting a hefty 400 sensor strength against all sensors which makes it very hard to pin down for all but the highest skilled probers

Skills, stats and materials required

Mobile Depot

Skills:

BPO Skills: Industry LvL 1

General Skills: None required

Stats:

Volume: 50m3

Mass: 10,000.00 kg

Deployment:

Distance from deploying ship: 250m

Min distance from other Mobile Depot: 6,000m

Min distance from Stargate or Station: 50km

Min Distance from Control Tower: 40km

Activation delay: 1 minute

Maximum Lifetime: 30 days

Structure Retrieval: 2,500m

Capacity: 3,000m3 (Wetu/Yurt: 4,000m3)

Access range: 2,500m

Allows direct placement of cargo: Yes

Cargo accessible by all: No

Max fitting range: 3,000m

Reinforcement period: 2 Days

Tech Level: Level 1

Meta Level: Level 1

Shield Capacity: 5,000 HP

Recharge Time: 2100.00s

Armor HP: 5,000 HP

Structure HP: 7,500 HP

Sig Radius: 500m

Sensor Strength:

RADAR: 50 (Wetu: 200. Yurt: 400)

LADAR: 50 (Wetu: 200. Yurt: 400)

Magnetometric: 50 (Wetu: 200. Yurt: 400)

Gravimetric: 50 (Wetu: 200. Yurt: 400)

Materials Required

Pyerite: 270

Tritanium: 6750

Zydrine: 270

Guidance Systems: 3

High-Tech Transmitters: 1

Nuclear Reactors: 1

Smartfab Units: 3